A Book Recommendation
I have a book recommendation for y’all. The name of the book is Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. This is a truly amazing book.
I started reading the book one night before going to bed. Now, I have to mention that I usually stick to calm reading material before going to bed. Most of the time, that means I flip through a magazine or read a book that I’ve enjoyed in the past. Reading something exciting and then trying to go to sleep afterward is hard for me. But, since this book is kind of in the “my life with a disability” genre, I thought that I would be safe beginning it at night. I was so wrong.
In the first few chapters of the book, Daniel talks about his mind and how it works. I was just blown away by how he described the workings of his
amazing brain. Numbers for Daniel have a texture, a shape, a color and he has a different emotional response to each of them. He offers
a picture of pi — you know, 3.14 yada-yada — on his website. Pi, by the way, is a number that he has memorized and recited in public to over 22,500 decimal places. He can do complex calculations and doesn’t even really know how he accomplishes it. For instance, knowing 4567 multiplied by itself 4 times is as easy as breathing for him. Later in life, he learned that he could absorb languages by studying the patterns involved. For this project, Brainman, he leaned Icelandic — reportedly one of the worlds most difficult languages — in just one week. He is just incredible.
Of course, as amazing as his brain and learning processes are, I was
more interested in his development, his family life and his perspective on his life. He is the oldest of like, nine children. His parents are an inspiration for me — even without considering the other children that they had to care for, I was inspired by how they kept trying to love and help this difficult child. And then, to read about some of Daniel’s interesting behaviors, shall we say, that he has had over the years made me feel better about my own interesting sons and their behaviors. He once collected hundreds of ladybugs. At another time, he amassed so many chestnuts that it provoked his parents to be concerned about the structural strength of the floor in the room in which they were stored. Of particular interest to me was his experience with peers in school and the dawning of his realizations about his disability and his motivation to overcome his social and emotional hurdles.
There is a National Public Radio interview with him here. You can also read the first chapter of this book on the NPR page as well.
Daniel’s experiences and accomplishments have given me hope. He is
truly amazing and his life, as he describes it in the book, has been incredible. I’m excited to see what the future brings for him and what scientists are able to learn by studying his amazing mind.
